Are these the dumbest investing ideas you\’ve ever heard?

With the Fourth of July holiday out of the way and stocks sitting at or near record highs, it\’s a good time to step back and reassess, to ponder not the winners, but to identify the dumbest, most poorly thought out investing ideas of the first half of 2014.

Investment strategist and blogger Barry Ritholtz gets the ball rolling in a column at the Washington Post, updating his progress in filling out his annual top 10 list of dumb investment ideas. He makes the important distinction between ideas that merely lost money and the truly benighted, noting that the nature of investing means a significant percentage of trades will be losers. Instead, he attempts to sift out the thoroughly boneheaded moves that he argues betray a fundamental misunderstanding about investing.

At the top of his list, so far, are athlete IPOs. As you may recall, Fantex Brokerage Services earlier this year agreed to buy a 10% cut of all of San Francisco 49ers tight end Vernon Davis\’s future earnings for $4 million, then sold shares tied to Davis\’s future earnings on an exchange ran by the company. An earlier offering of shares tied to the performance of the Houston Texans\’ Arian Foster was delayed late last year after Foster suffered a season-ending injury.

Given that investors have limited ability to pick which companies will do well, Ritholtz says it\’s ridiculous to think you have \”any ability to guess what any athlete\’s future income stream is going to be.\” Then there\’s the risk of injury cutting short already brief careers. On top of that, Davis would need a new $33 million contract and to also keep endorsement money flowing after his career for investors to make money, he says. \”Again the thought of most investors getting this correct is laughable,\” writes Ritholtz, who is also scathing on the appeal of the so-called goldbug portfolio, which effectively \”offers one giant bet on the exact same trade,\” mutual funds held at the mutual fund company instead of an ordinary brokerage account and investing in 10 separate S&P 500 index sectors instead of a single S&P 500 fund.

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